According to Japanese business outlet Nikkei, the electronics firm hopes to get out of the plasma biz much sooner than initially thought. Indeed, Panasonic has reportedly already discontinued the development of new plasma TVs and hopes to stop production by the end of fiscal 2013 which is around March of next year.

This leaves Samsung and LG as the sole manufacturers, with little incentive to develop a better product. This year's Panasonic ZT60 is considered pretty much the best tv ever.

OLED is hitting the market as the next big thing, but they have major questions of life expectancy (the color blue fades much faster than other colors) and yield (for every one that works at the factory several don't).

It is for now. Like I said, they only exist at 55" and are only 1080p (not 4K). The Samsung is $9000 and I think LG dropped their price to match, if not its still around $14,000.

TV margins are basically non-existent. Just like how LG and Samsung (Korean) used LED to put the screws to Sony, Sharp, and Panasonic (Japan), Hisense, TCL, Seiki and other Chinese firms are doing it to everyone else now.

The Chinese firms are selling these 4K sets very cheap. They're using 4K as their entrance into the US mainstream.

The legacy manufacturers are currently pricing OLED to 1) try to build in some profit margin and 2) offset all the loses from the large number of OLED panels who don't pass quality control

Nuge wrote:So what will this do to prices? I'd love to pick up a Panasonic plasma on the cheap.

I really don't know - opinions on the enthusiast forums are mixed. It will either drive prices up in a run to get one of the last ones, or bottom them out as consumers turn away from an abandoned technology.

Sony has been getting crushed too. At first the pressure was from Korean firms who were making them cheaper. Now Chinese companies are presenting a threat to both.

I don't know what the economics are the whole way up the supply chain, but where I worked we routinely sold Panasonic plasmas at or below our cost. In general we were supposed to make that loss up selling an extended warranty and Monster cables, but when we had various promotions I know the manufacturer kicked the store a rebate back on the discounted selling price at some point. We often got spiffs for selling certain Panasonic models as well (Sharp spiffs were usually $100, Panasonic was either $15 or $50).

Sears is (was?) trying to get rid of all their commissioned electronics salespeople. That might sound nice in that you won't be hounded to buy things. But they still have the same metrics (or they wont get hours). So now you have a disincentivized person who likely knows less just doing whatever to keep their job.